I can pretty much pinpoint the moment I started giving a fuck about grammar. I mean, Grammar Nazis are made, not born, don’t you think? Nobody really crawls around in their playpen caring about dangling participles and split infinitives. But at some point, some small number of us, myself included, morph into those annoying people who you hear saying things like, “Oh my god, did you see that? They totally misspelled the word “clearance” on that sign!” We become Grammar Nazis.
For me it happened in freshman year of high school. Looking back now, I can see that this English teacher I had was probably not that long out of high school himself, and he looked like he could have been Bob Dylan’s twin brother. Anyway, one day, he challenged us to have a lucid thought, any lucid thought, without using language. For me, at least, the task was, and is, impossible. I mean, I’m sure I could reach that point, after a few years of saffron robes and contemplation of the navel. But basically, the seed was planted: thought = language, so therefore, the more precise and correct the language, the more precise and correct the thoughts. That’s the logic, anyway, although I’m not sure that my ability to use the word “puerile” in a sentence allows me to think any more precisely than anyone else. Nevertheless, that was the moment, the birth of another Grammar Nazi.
Of course, one learns rather quickly that almost nobody likes being corrected for any reason; and being corrected for poor grammar is way down on the list. So not everyone knows of our obsession. Significant others, more often than not, have to hear it as we critique spelling, punctuation, and grammar on signs, billboards, television, you name it. After a while, they pretty much just turn their heads just a little bit and roll their eyes when we start screaming, “No! It’s “This is she,” not “her!” So, over the years we learn to keep it to ourselves, to mask our horror as we watch our Mother Tongue get blithely mangled and beaten, degenerated to the point where using one’s thumbs to type out “OMG ROTFL” constitutes writing a letter, and pseudo-words like “tonite” or “thru” have become totally acceptable.
But each of us still harbor those “Cardinal Sins”, those offenses which will have us shuddering as we overhear a conversation at a diner or as we are trapped at the in-law’s, watching reruns of “BJ and the Bear”. These are my Top 4.
1) “Very unique” Nope, you just can’t say that. “Unique” is what is called a “singular” adjective, meaning that something either is, or isn’t. There are very few singular adjectives, but they are there. “Unique” is one. Something is either unique, or it isn’t unique. There is no “sort of unique”. “Dead” is singular. As is “perfect”. We can’t all go around saying things like “very perfect”, or we’ll all sound like one of those bubble headed blonde beauty queens who, like, gets sort of lost in mid-sentence and ends up rambling about Guatemalan orphans and “opposite marriage”.
2) “Momentarily” “Momentarily” is indeed a word, but it doesn’t really mean what people seem to think it means. It does not mean “in a moment.” “Momentarily” means something that only happens for a brief period of time, as in: “I was momentarily speechless at the enormity of your ignorance.” You do not want to hear things like: “Ladies and gentlemen, the pilot has notified us that we will be lifting off momentarily.” The only way I know of to express the idea of “in a moment” is to actually use the words “in a moment”. That is, unless there is a 3-letter acronym for “in a moment” for use while texting your BFF.
3) “Irregardless” This is not a word. Please do not use it. If it were a word, it would be a double-negative anyway, so it would be a bad word. But it is not a word at all.
4) “How may I help you?” The main reason I hate this phrase, other than the fact that it’s grammatically imperfect, is entirely personal. A few years ago, I worked for a grocery chain called Grand Union. They’re sort of quaint and old-timey in the American lexicon of grocery stores, like A&P or the IGA. Anyway, it was printed, right there on our name tags. Right there, below my name, it said “How may I help you?” Now, if they had said, “How can I help you?”, that would have been fine. Or even, “May I help you?”, without the word ‘how’ would have been OK. But not “How may I help you.” Don’t force me to wear it on my chest. Even though I am the only person in the store who has any idea that this is not good English. So that phrase has earned its way into my list of Deadly Sins.
It did feel good to get some of that off my chest. Confession, they say, is good for the soul. Of course, I am notorious for errors of my own. I am fully aware of my frequent abuse of the semicolon, and the purist would no doubt be horrified by my flagrant misuse of quotation marks in the previous four paragraphs alone. So there could be another Grammar Nazi reading this, shuddering and cringing the whole time. But for now, I can go back to my quiet, internalized life, quietly proofreading Chinese restaurant menus and homemade placards at Tea Party rallies. At least, momentarily.
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